Monday, April 20, 2009

National Poetry Month, Day 20: Naomi Shihab Nye

Two Countriesby Naomi Shihab Nye

Skin remembers how long the years growwhen skin is not touched, a gray tunnelof singleness, feather lost from the tailof a bird, swirling onto a step,swept away by someone who never sawit was a feather. Skin ate, walked,slept by itself, knew how to raise a see-you-later hand. But skin feltit was never seen, never known asa land on the map, nose like a city,hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosqueand the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that's what skin does.Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.Love means you breathe in two countries.And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.Even now, when skin is not alone,it remembers being alone and thanks something largerthat there are travelers, that people go placeslarger than themselves.

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Health, stealth, and the exploration of the wide-open-but-sometimes-craggy-and-hard-to-navigate landscape of having a body, a mind, and something else none of us can put a finger on but oh do we try. (And, also, sometimes, frogs, punk rock, and unsolicited advice.)